A Salute to Milwaukee's "Best" Brewery

When a group of color lithographs come along from a bygone day that seem to want preserving, I often try to give them a measure of future existence by placing them on this blog.  Thus it was of particular interest to find group of late 19th Century illustrations of Milwaukee’s Empire Brewery, later known as the Best Brewery and even later as Pabst Brewery.

As a former resident of Milwaukee, I am very familiar with the brewery complex that in my day was known as Pabst.  As a college student I have taken the brewery tour there on several occasions and my favorite local watering hole was the Forstkeller, a saloon in a former Methodist church adjacent to and owned by the brewery.   With the brewery and Forstkeller now closed, I have collected two glass paperweights issued by the company.   Shown here, top, is a weight that shows the Best complex in central Milwaukee that became Pabst.  Below is a weight with a scene that introduces the Empire Brewery and Philip Best.

Phillip Best, shown in a lithograph below was the son of Jacob Best (1786-1861), a German born brewer who immigrated to the the U.S. in 1844 to join his four sons in Milwaukee.   There he founded a brewery on Chestnut Street Hill that he called the Empire Brewery and ran it with his sons.  After Jacob retired in 1853, Philip headed the operation and the company became known as Philip Best & Company.   Philip died in 1869 and was memorialized in an illustration from a company booklet prepared for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

In the meantime Best’s daughter, Maria had met steamship captain named Frederick Pabst in 1860 and married him two years later.  In 1864, Pabst purchased a half interest in the brewing company for $21,057.05 and became vice president. After the marriage of Best’s second daughter, Lisette, in 1866, her husband, Emil Shandein also purchased the remaining half interest from Phillip Best.  After Philip’s death Frederick took control of the brewery.  

The 1869 purchase of the Melms Brewer by the Phillip Best and Co. would prove profitable. Best (1814-1869) died that same year and Pabst and Schandein took over management of the business. In the next two decades the Best Brewery, later Pabst, would grow at a spectacular rate. Helping to trigger this growth was a fluke of history, the Chicago fire of 1871, which would provide a new market for Milwaukee’s breweries as Chicago competitors would never recover.  By 1874 Phillip Best Brewing Co. was the nation’s largest brewer.

When the Philadelphia exposition occurred two years later Pabst — at the height of its ascendance — was responsible for putting out a promotion booklet there in German, English and French.  Among scenes were three of the earlier Empire Distillery, as seen below.

In addition to its north side Milwaukee location, the company subsequently opened a second brewery on the city’s heavily ethnic South Side.   This facility had the advantage of being both on a water source and a railroad spur.  It is shown below on three lithographs.

Pabst (1836-1904) was also a pioneer in providing his own bottling plant on premises at a time when beer rolled out of a brewery only in barrels, to be decanted into bottles by the distributors or other independent firms.  A picture of that facility also was among the lithographs.  Note the proximity to rail.  

The final illustration in the booklet was a picture of the Frederick Pabst home, that I earlier misidentified as the present Pabst Mansion.  Rick Stabler, see below has corrected me. This illustration of the Pabst residence is not his mansion on Wisconsin (then Grand) Avenue but the house he lived in previously at 9th and Chestnut (Juneau Avenue). The home pictured was razed for brewery expansion when Frederick Pabst built his mansion on Grand Avenue. 

The Best Centennial booklet sold on eBay early in 2018 for $150 although far from pristine.  It clearly is a prize in someone’s collection.   I am happy that through the use of the computer and Internet it is possible to bring these lithographs to a wider audience.

When Drinking and Driving Was Cool

Today the American public is warned on countless fronts about the dangers of  “drinking and driving”   Magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and billboards all carry that message.  Not so in the pre-Prohibition era when the automobile was a new invention.  Shown here are examples of vintage advertising that clearly seem to be fostering drinking and driving.

The automobile came along at the end of the 19th Century.  In 1895, for example, only about 300 motor cars existed in the entire United States. At the beginning of the 20th Century that number had increased to 8,000.  From there automotive growth was explosive — 78,000 in 1905, 459,000 in 1910, and 1.7 million in 1914.   Among other industries, breweries were quick to see the trend and to use automobiles in their advertising.

The first example is the ad above left from the Maier Brewing Company of Los Angeles.  It shows a “grande dame” with a large feathered hat downing a glass of beer.   Even more her liveried chauffeur also is pouring himself a snort.  Their automobile has no windshield and as a result both are wearing goggles. Note that the steering wheel also is missing.  This beer-maker has been described in the press of its time as “one of the oldest and best appointed brewery establishments on the Pacific Coast, and one that it has made itself and its superior products famous….”   The company sold its beer in Western states and even exported abroad.

Windshields had come along — but true headlights had not — by the time Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis issued this ad for Budweiser.  It shows two couples out for a ride in their motor sedan.  Here there is a steering wheel, but it is positioned on the right  — it took the industry a while to straighten out that detail.  The two men and two women have stopped at the “Motor Car Inn,”  obviously a trendy place, for refreshment.   They are getting “curbside” service from a waiter who has four bottles of Bud and glasses on a tray.   With its drive-through daiquiri shops, Louisiana is about the only place left in America where one can get alcohol served to the car.

Pickwick Beer issued an ad featuring a jaunty look gent and his flapper companion heading in their fancy roadster toward a drinking establishment called “Ye Tavern,”  that — no surprise — served Pickwick ale and stout.  The couple look very keen on sampling “the tang of good old ale.” These brands were the product of Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, described as a Rhode Island industrialist and Massachusetts brewer, who called two of his beer brands “Pickwick Pale” and “Pickwick Stout,”  presumably after the character in Dickens novel.

Perhaps the most provocative of the “driving and drinking” promotions was a “novelty song hit” called “There’s Something Else Goes With It” and showing two comely young ladies, out for a ride and scarves blowing in the wind —no shield here.  What clearly goes with joy riding is “glorious old” Rainier Beer, the product of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company.  The chorus, written by an obscure songwriter named J. Louis MacEvoy, tells us so:

There’s something else goes with it you like to think about;

There’s something in its spirit that you cannot do without.

Yes, something else goes with it and to you its very clear,

There’s something else goes with it.

What?  Rainier, Rainier, Rainier.

The next motoring and suds scene comes on a beer stein issued by Milwaukee’s Juneau Hotel in 1914.   Like the Maier ad earlier, a woman is being chauffeured.  This one is rather prim looking and the driver intent on reaching the destination, which is — a saloon.  A waiter is right outside waiting with a large foaming stein under a sign that proclaims “Lager Beer.”  The Juneau Hotel was located at 229 Wisconsin Ave in the heart of downtown.  Originally an apartment house it had been turned into a hotel in 1910 by Eugene Trimberger.  In 1919 he established a restaurant on the site called Eugene’s.  Known for its seafood, Eugene’s was a favor of mine when I lived in Milwaukee.

That city was famous for touting its beer heritage, once the center of brewing in America but, sadly, no longer.  This post card, entitled “Seeing Milwaukee,” boosted Pabst Beer.  The barrel between the wheels and the banner that waves atop proclaims the name. The drinking here seems to be confined to the tourists aboard a bus whose seats are made from beer barrels.  Several passengers can be seen imbibing.  The boxes along the side are clever in indicating favored Milwaukee German food items — sauerkraut, frankfurter, pumpernickel, and schwitzerkase (swiss cheese).

Not to be outdone, the Miller Brewing Company had its own postcard, entitled “The Water Wagon in Milwaukee.”  Have included it although the source of locomotion is not a gasoline engine but two dachshunds. There is enough drinking going on among all those hanging on to make this a risky situation.  

The final example of pre-prohibition “drinking and driving” comes from a postcard with no attribution on it but similar to those that feature the Milwaukee skyline.  Here the Germanic-appearing driver has in hand a vehicle whose engine is in a beer barrel, with two open steins as headlamps, and a third stein at hand should the dust he is stirring up make him dry.

The juxtaposition of the automobile and beer drinking ended with National Prohibition in when the Nation’s breweries either closed or were reduced to providing non-alcoholic beverages.  After repeal, the ubiquitous nature of the automobile and the frequency of drunken driving discouraged a repeat of these varieties of beer ads.  Today, of course, such images would be utterly unthinkable.

Note:  In my next post I will concentrate on beer and liquor ads that juxtapose drinking and flying, a prospect even more terrifying than drinking and driving.

“Come Drink Beer with Me”: Brewery Song Books

      

Drink beer, drink beer,

Oh come drink beer with me;

I don’t give a damn

For any old man, 

Who won’t drink beer with me

Above is a song sung lustily from the back booths of taverns and bars all over America by college student today and reaching back into the 19th Century.   Drinking beer and singing are like Siamese twins — not joined at the hip, but joined at the lip.  This close identification was understood by many a brewery in vintage times.  Illustrated here are a number of examples of the song books they issued to take advantage of the musical carousing.

The first item, “Drinking Songs for Auld Lang Syne,” is illustrated by a barbershop quartet, all in tuxedos, three of the gents wearing homberg hats.  The notes are flying.  This song book was issued by the Schmidt Brewing Company of St. Paul.  Formerly located at 882 West Seventh Street in that city, it was founded in 1855 and its name changed when Jacob Schmidt, formerly the brewmaster at Hamm’s Brewing Co., took over.  The brewery continued under that name until 1954, staying open during National Prohibition by making “near beer.”

The barbershop quartet motif was echoed the “Songs of Long Ago” issued for Bruck’s Jubilee Beer.  Here the songsters are actually performing in a barbershop while the barbers and patrons look on.   The chaps apparently are serenading with “Sweet Adeline,” that was, we are told, the 1903 Season’s Song Hit.   This book originated from the Bruckmann Cumminsville Brewing Company of Cincinnati.  Bruckmann operated two plants and featured a number of brands in addition to “Brucks.”  They included “Big Ben Ale,” “Aristocrat Cereal Beverage,” “Jubilee Beer,” and “Dixie Beer.”  The company also issued a song book that looked like a foaming mug of its brew.  

The Star Beverage Company of Minster, Ohio, issued two song books, both entitled “Sing the Good Old Times.”  The items advertised the brewery’s “Wood Shoe Lager Beer,”  available, we learn, on draught and bottles.   It is not clear why one shows the beer in the stein with a golden color while the other shows up amber.   The brewery was founded in 1869 by one Frank Lange who ran it until 1882 when the Steinemann brothers bought and directed the plant until it became Star Brewery in 1890.  Under that name it operated until National Prohibition in 1919.  Surviving during America’s “dry period” by producing nonalcoholic beverages, it began making beer again in 1933, finally closing in 1954.

Milwaukee’s Blatz brewery, of which I have written extensively before, created a song book made to resemble a German beer stein, complete with pewter lid.  These were created to carry the identification of particular restaurants and saloons carrying Blatz beer.  The one advertised here was a Cleveland, Ohio, watering hole known as “Braustub’l,”  located on the Lorain Road.  Once the book was opened, Blatz’s ad made its appearance.  This view allows us to read the songs and — goodness me — they are all in German.  Although “O Tannenbaum” hardly seems like an appropriate drinking song, except perhaps at Christmas,  I well recall intoning “A Du Lieber Augustin” and “Du, Du, Leigst Mir Im Hezen” at the Trails Inn Lodge in Milwaukee, with the owner, Mitzi, joining in.

“Everybody Sing!” was the title of the Duquesne Brewery Song book.  It advertised Duquesne Pilsener as “The Finest Beer in Town.”  That town was Pittsburgh where the brewery was a major merchandiser of beer from its founding in 1899 until dissolved in 1972.  Using a wooden barrel as the motif for the song book might have been the idea of Henry Miller who had begun his business career selling furniture.  It is said to be one of the first breweries in America to use refrigerated train cars to transport its beer to customer outside Pittsburgh.  Opening the book reveals the motto “Songs you love to sing, beer you love to drink.”  The index of songs reveals a fairly tepid roster of tunes including “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and “Goodnight Ladies.”  Inclusion of Franklin Roosevelt's theme, “Happy Days Are Here Again” suggests a post-Prohibition origin.  

Even as far away as Los Angeles, the beer and singing tradition impelled the Eastside Brewery to issue a song book that featured beer songs in the repertory of Carl Ledel’s Tirolier & Bayern Orchestra, aka the “Alpine Troubadours.” Shown here front and back, the cover gives us two lyrics, one in German, the other in   English.    I remain puzzled by the motto at the top of the publication:  “Put Eastside Inside - For the Gesundheit.”  Is it implied that their beer can induce sneezing?  Eastside Brewery owes its origins to a Bavarian immigrant and veteran brewmaster named George Zobelein who bought an existing Los Angeles brewery and began making a range of beers from light pilsners and dark hocks, all under the Eastside label.  When purchased by Pabst the brand was retired after 1962.

Speaking of that Milwaukee brewery, the final song book is entitled “Pabst Blue Ribbon Stein Songs,” and shows a shapely woman holding a stein with the background of a red checked table cloth, just like those featured at the “Forstkeller,” the Pabst-owned German restaurant and bar immediately adjacent to the brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee.  It was at the Forstkeller too that beer and song mingled in a way to gladden the heart and remain fixed in memory.  This song book is definitely post-Prohibition, dating from about 1933.

It seems only fitting to end this tribute to singing, drinking and brewery song books by quoting another favorite of the bierstube crowd:

Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit

Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit